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CONSULTANCY
SERVICES
Odour abatement
efficiency assessment
Assessment of the odour abatement efficiency of odour control
plant is increasingly being required by regulators and industry
to demonstrate the effectiveness of controls put in place to
minimise annoyance in the community. Efficiency assessments
take two forms: assessment of the overall abatement efficiency
of plant in terms of odour concentration (as measured using
CEN EN 13725 for olfactometry), and assessment of the abatement
efficiency for specific odorous compounds or groups of compounds.
Odournet UK offers a full range of services for both of these
approaches.
Principal of efficiency measurement
Conventional odour abatement efficiency tests require measurement
and collection of samples from the untreated and treated gas
flows to be performed simultaneously, to reduce the impact of
source variation and enable a direct comparison of the odour
load before and after the abatement system.
Olfactometry assessment
Olfactometry assessments involve collection of odour samples
from the treated and untreated air streams with subsequent analysis
by olfactometry. This approach is used to determine the overall
abatement efficiency of the plant in terms of odour units (ouE).
Where potential odour annoyance is an issue, the approach can
be supplemented with measurements of hedonic tone/intensity
to enable a comparison of the quality of the odours to be conducted,
in addition to the numerical assessment offered by concentration
analysis alone. This is useful in determining whether residual
odours from treatment plant are likely to result in annoyance
impacts.
Chemical specific assessments
It is sometimes necessary to define the odour abatement efficiency
of plant in terms of specific odorous species (e.g. amines,
dimethyl sulphide etc). In these cases, samples are collected
and analysed using conventional analytical techniques (e.g.
GC-MS), appropriate to the trace gas or gases of interest.
Since odorous airstreams are commonly made up of complex mixtures
of odorants, chemical species and olfactometry assessments are
often conducted hand in hand, to gain an insight into the effect
of removing specific chemicals on the overall odour concentration
of the release.
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